have a dog—perhaps two…
‘Have you a dog?’ she asked suddenly, and everyone looked bewildered. All except the doctor, who looked up, studied her face carefully and answered, just as though he had read her thoughts: ‘Yes. He sits with me while I eat my breakfast. If you’d like to collect your purse or whatever, I’ll be with you in a couple of minutes.’
The plane was moored to the jetty, a small seaplane, very spick and span, bouncing up and down in what Annis considered to be a quite unnecessarily boisterous manner.
‘It’s the wind catching her,’ explained the doctor, just as though Annis had spoken out loud. ‘Jump in.’
‘Isn’t there anyone else coming?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’ And because he obviously wasn’t going to say more than that, she climbed aboard and settled herself down.
She hadn’t expected to enjoy the trip because she had to confess to a secret fear that the small craft might drop like a stone on to the white wastes below them, or lose a wing or a vital bit of its engine, but presently her fears left her, probably because her companion exhibited much the same sort of calm as a bus driver going along a well-remembered country lane.
After a little while he began to point out various landmarks. ‘There’s Magdalena Bay straight ahead, and Konigsfjord is round the corner. The cruisers all go there and then on up to the ice barrier.’
They had been following the coastline for a good deal of the time, now he banked and pointed downwards. ‘There’s Ny Aalesund; we’ll come down by the pier—it’s quite a walk to the shop and the road’s a mixture of coal and lava. We’ll take a taxi if you would rather.’
‘A taxi? Here? Surely they can’t earn their living? Where are the roads?’
‘There are two, and they don’t go far, but all the same a car can be useful to get about. In the winter everyone has snow scooters.’
He came down some way from the shore and taxied slowly up to the pier, where several men appeared to make the plane fast. ‘Out you get,’ said the doctor. ‘We’ll go straight to the shop, though I suggest that we stop at the post office and have coffee.’
Annis could see no post office, no houses, for that matter, just a dusty track alongside a bridge being built over a rambling little river hurrying down to the sea. The track opened out on to a road once they had crossed the bridge and she could see it winding uphill, past some wooden houses. The doctor took her arm. ‘It’s much nicer once we get to the top,’ he said reassuringly.
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